by L D Marr
He walked closer and rubbed up against her arm. Buttons didn’t answer her question, and Roz thought she knew the answer anyway, but she didn’t want to think about it.
Instead, she focused on sensing the most murderous of the people in the bar again. Because Madame was close by, Roz noticed her too. She gave off thick greed, jealousy, and hatred of Roz and the other dancers. And her blood had a dank, muddy smell to it.
As soon as Roz took a whiff, she felt like gagging again. She stopped breathing to avoid the smell. Roz was relieved to discover that Cowboy Bob was right about vampires not needing to breathe.
That experience was disturbing, but Roz decided to worry about it later. She still had a murderer to catch.
Roz turned her new perceptive sense back into the saloon. Among more than fifty men seated there, at least a dozen had killed. Again, Roz was able to locate the one who had killed the most—second to Horace—and would kill again. He sat at a table with two other men who were also killers.
“Here goes,” she told Buttons.
Roz got up off her barstool, put a smile on her face, and walked over to join the three murderers.
⌛
In the remaining hours till the saloon closed, Roz questioned several of the most undesirable-looking customers—and a few well-dressed ones. They answered her questions in the same frozen-faced manner. She learned about many horrendous murders but nothing about the murder she was interested in.
With her three protectors watching all night, Roz never felt herself in the slightest danger from the company she kept. Jonah sat at the bar drinking sarsaparilla and hiding under his hat. Cowboy Bob never moved even a centimeter from his leaning position on the wall. Up high on the bar, Buttons didn’t hide his interest, but no one seemed to notice the small black cat.
When Cowboy Bob finally moved and announced in his fake Texas drawl that it was closing time, Roz was exhausted and disappointed. She hadn’t found Gertie’s killer, and she was starting to feel the sharp edge of hunger denied.
“You need to eat soon,” Buttons told her mentally when she scooped him up in her arms to carry him to their room. “I’ve adjusted to our new diet requirements. It’s no big deal really.”
“It’s no big deal to you, but it is to me,” Roz answered him back in her mind. “And I can’t handle that right now.”
“Well, you’ll have to handle it before too long,” said Buttons. “Before you go loco. Remember what Cowboy Bob told you?”
“Don’t worry. I’m too tired to go loco tonight,” said Roz.
The pang of hunger struck again when she passed Jonah still sitting at the bar. They both kept up the pretense of ignoring each other, but Roz felt a rush of pleasure from knowing she’d see him the next evening.
She carried Buttons up to her room and dropped him on the bed. Roz undressed, brushed her teeth, got inside the covers, and was asleep in no time.
⌛
Cowboy Bob stood behind the bar and waited for all the customers to leave the saloon. His fixed, intense stare of intention pushed the last reluctant drinkers up off their chairs and out the door.
All the women left too—through the door that led to the stairs to their rooms. All but Loretta. She sat alone at the bar sipping from an almost-empty glass of wine.
Cowboy Bob looked at her, and physical desire for her body mingled with hunger for her blood stirred deep inside his own body.
A few soft waves of blonde hair escaped the pins that held them up high in a dramatic bouffant. Cowboy thought of the many nights when he’d slowly removed all the pins and let the silken hair fall into his hands that stroked and then moved on to more intimate places.
He sighed with deep regret.
It was for Loretta’s own good that I transformed another woman, he told himself. Because I care about her, I didn’t want her to be destroyed like all the others who couldn’t control themselves. But how I wish it could have been her!
Almost as if reading his mind, Loretta turned to face him with hope in her deep blue eyes. And Cowboy Bob was pulled to her as if she had her own supernatural powers.
He walked out from behind the bar and took the seat next to the one she sat on. For a moment, they stared at each other, saying nothing. For once, Cowboy Bob didn’t know what to say.
I’d like to tell her everything, but how can I explain this situation? It must be kept hidden from all mortals to ensure the survival of my ancient race, he pondered. It’s for their own benefit that they cannot know of us.
Loretta broke the long silence.
“Did you believe me when I told you I didn’t bring that man to my room last night?” she asked. “I was trying to make you jealous. I thought you’d get riled up and say I could only bring you. But you didn’t.”
Cowboy Bob watched a tear form in the corner of one of Loretta’s eyes. It fell out and trailed down her softly curved cheek. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out a hand to wipe the moisture from her face. The urge was even stronger to taste that moisture and the even sweeter taste of her blood. But Cowboy Bob resisted.
He hungered for Loretta. But Cowboy Bob stared into her eyes without using the hypnotic power that would cloud her memory. The power affected her awareness, so that she remembered his thirsty sucking of blood from her neck as mere nuzzling.
As Cowboy Bob pushed down that hunger, something else stirred inside him. He recognized this feeling from their times together, but it had always been mixed in with his hungry passion and physical desire. A strong affection that filled him, even though his physical needs weren’t being met.
Cowboy Bob now realized that he’d never felt this way about any of the women in his past. He’d desired them, but he’d never experienced this same deep affection that satisfied him beyond physical needs.
What am I feeling? he asked himself. Could I be in what the poets call ‘love’?
The shock of that idea caused his eyes to widen and his mouth to gape open. Again, Cowboy Bob sat speechless, but Loretta spoke up and filled the silence.
“I haven’t been with another man. And I’ll be waiting for you if you have time for me again. Even if you might be seeing another woman right now.”
She looked at him with eyes that begged for the truth. And Cowboy Bob longed to give it to her. Or at least give her a partial explanation.
I owe her that much, he decided.
He reached out and took her warm, delicate hands in both his colder powerful ones. She smiled up at him as if encouraged by his touch. Cowboy Bob sighed inwardly at the renewed physical contact that he realized he’d missed so much in only the past two days.
“Loretta,” he said. “Of course, I believe you. And I don’t want to stop seeing you. That’s the last thing I ever want to do. But there are things you don’t know about me, and I was trying to protect you.”
“What things, Cowboy Bob?” she asked. “Does it have anything to do with Gertie getting killed?”
“No, it doesn’t,” he said. “Or at least I don’t think so. But I was never close to Gertie, if that’s the conclusion you’re jumping to. Anyway, in the past, it was dangerous for women to get too close to me. I want to protect you from that. Because I care about you, Loretta. I care about you more than I’ve ever cared about any other woman,” he confessed. “And that’s why I wanted to stay away from you. To keep you safe.”
Loretta smiled through her tears. Then instead of accepting Cowboy Bob’s warning, she learned forward and wrapped her arms around him. She hugged him tight and nuzzled into his chest.
“Do you think I’d rather be safe then be with you?” she asked him. “Anyway, I don’t believe you. I think being with you is the safest place in the world.”
Cowboy Bob brushed a hand through her lustrous hair and down to her exposed soft shoulder. His normally sharp mind felt muddled.
Should I be encouraging her when I need to be busy romancing my selected life mate? he questioned himself. But Roz isn’t ready to accept me, and it might take a l
ong time to woo her. Perhaps all of Loretta’s lifetime. Meanwhile, what harm can it do?
“I don’t know what to think now,” he said to Loretta. “I thought you’d be safer with me not around, but the first night I left you, a woman was killed. And I never would have forgiven myself if that was you.”
He lowered his face toward her upturned shining eyes. Her lips parted and moved toward his. Cowboy Bob couldn’t stop himself from kissing her long and deep. Until a hunger inside him was partly satisfied.
When he pulled away from the kiss, she sighed and rested on him again. Her soft-skinned hand reached inside his shirt to stroke his hard-muscled chest.
“Will you come to my room tonight?” she asked.
Now along with the desire he was used to hearing in her sweetly feminine voice, Cowboy Bob heard a hint of apprehension. A stab of guilt went through him.
“Yes. But I can’t come right away. First, I must go out. There’s a task I must perform.”
In his confusion, he slipped out of speaking with his artificial Texas accent, and Loretta noticed.
“You’re talking different,” she said. “Does that have something to do with the danger you told me about? And are you going out to do something dangerous?”
“Yes. I’m not the man you think I am,” he said. “Will you still want me if you find out that I’m someone else?”
Loretta pulled back from him, straightened on her barstool, and looked up into his face.
“You might talk different, but you’re still the man I know,” she insisted. “I’ll be waiting for you in my room.
Then Loretta climbed down from the stool, pressed a kiss on his cheek, and walked away with a sashay of skirts and a sway of her hips.
Chapter 13
Roz woke up when the last glimmer of the late afternoon sun disappeared beneath the horizon. She was relieved that there had been no visit from Cowboy Bob in the night.
She sat up in bed and stretched, and then noticed that she felt refreshed but hungry. Buttons lifted his sleepy head and stared at her.
“Hungry this morning?” he asked in her mind.
“Oh, just a bit,” she lied back mentally. “But I’ll be fine.”
But Buttons wasn’t fooled.
“I know you’re ravenous. If you’re too squeamish to drink human blood, you can go out hunting with me. I can get you some animal blood—deer or coyote or bear. All I need to do is look them in the eyes. Then they stand still as a water bowl and let me drink. You could take a drink too.”
“I’m not going to drink those animals’ blood!” said Roz. “That’s not fair to them.”
“Why isn’t it fair?” Buttons asked. “I only take what I need from the big ones. I don’t even kill mice and birds and other small critters like I used to. I thought you’d be happy about that.”
Roz thought about it. She reached out a hand and scratched Buttons behind the ears.
“I guess that’s an improvement, but I still can’t do it. I’m a vegetarian, remember? I don’t consume any part of an animal’s body,” she said firmly.
“Well, you’re going to have to consume something before too long if you don’t want to go raving mad from hunger like Cowboy Bob said.”
“No. He was wrong about that. Not me. I’m not going to drink blood, and I’m not going to go crazy,” Roz insisted.
“OK. If you say so,” said Buttons. “Anyway, don’t worry about me. I’ll still love you when you’re insane.”
He lifted a leg and began taking his first bath of the day.
“That’s very sweet of you,” Roz answered him. “But right now, I need to get ready to go meet Jonah and tell him the results of my investigations last night. Which were none, actually.”
She sighed and got up out of bed. Her stomach growled, getting the last word in the conversation.
Chapter 14
A few hours later, Roz moved swiftly down the town’s main street toward Jonah’s boarding house. At intervals, lights shining through windows and in doorways spilled ghostly pools into the foggy darkness, but there were no streetlights.
Roz slipped through the night concealed in her dark gray travel cape even though it was mid-summer. She’d realized that a woman walking alone would be noticed in a town with so few women in residence. And anyone who spotted her might also see her go into Jonah’s place.
Now she decided that even if she was seen it probably wouldn’t matter. Her new powers had pulled confessions out of the men she’d talked to—although not the confession she’d been looking for. What worked last night would work again tonight, even if the men Roz questioned knew she’d spent time with Jonah.
The idea that she might not be safe out on the street at night didn’t enter her head, but it must have entered the heads of others. Roz sensed Buttons unseen but trailing along through the shadows behind her. And without looking, she was immediately aware of Jonah some distance away on the other side of the street.
Even at almost a hundred feet away, his faint but intoxicating aroma reached her. Roz’s empty stomach growled and clenched again, demanding to be fed.
I’m not that hungry, Roz lied to herself. I’ll worry about it later.
⌛
Fifteen minutes later, Jonah sat across from Roz at one of three small round tables in the dining room of his boarding house. He barely registered the fact that the other tables were empty. His eyes were all but absorbed by Roz.
Each time I see her, she’s even more irresistible, he thought. How can that be possible?
Jonah looked up when Gretta, his plump gray-haired landlady, brought a large tray to their table.
He introduced the two women while Gretta set appetizing vegetarian food choices and glasses of milk and water on the table.
“That looks delicious,” said Roz politely.
But a strange feeling told Jonah that Roz wasn’t interested in the food.
Gretta beamed at Roz.
“Why thank you, young lady,” she said.
“Where is everyone tonight, Gretta?” Jonah asked her.
Usually, two retired miners and Gretta and her husband ate their dinner at the same time as Jonah.
“We’re giving you some privacy, dear,” said Gretta. “We’ll eat in our rooms tonight.”
Jonah felt himself blush, but he appreciated what they were doing.
“Enjoy your meal, now,” she said.
Then Gretta left the room.
He looked back at Roz. She was pushing food around on her plate with a fork but not eating.
“Is this food what you’re used to eating?” he asked.
“Yes. It looks quite tasty. I guess I’m still not that hungry yet though,” Roz told him.
Jonah felt a bit worried about her. But Roz didn’t look like someone who hadn’t ate anything for two days. She bloomed with energy, health, and vitality.
She must have had a nibble of something since I saw her last, he thought. I’ll just eat up whatever she doesn’t finish, so Gretta doesn’t get her feelings hurt. It’s a lot of food, but it’s mostly vegetables.
He started eating the food on his side of the table.
“I’m sure you want to know what I found out from the customers I talked to last night,” said Roz.
Jonah stared back at her. He was surprised to realize that in his preoccupation with Roz, the murder hadn’t been on his mind.
“Right. That’s important,” he said. “Did they tell you anything that might be a clue?”
“Well. Not exactly,” she said with a bit of a pout that drew Jonah’s attention to her full lips.
He gulped, although there wasn’t any food in his mouth at that moment. Jonah reached for his water glass and took a swig to moisten his suddenly dry throat.
“I did hear some things that you should know about,” Roz continued.
“What things?” he asked.
Roz leaned forward across the table and spoke in a lower voice even though no one else was in the room.
“Murd
er confessions,” she said. “All the men I talked to told me they’d killed people. But none of them killed Gertie.”
This information jolted Jonah out of the haze he’d been in.
“I saw you talk to about six men last night. And they all confessed to murders? Well I guess that’s not a complete surprise with what I know about the type of people who pass through this town. I just don’t know if there’s anything to be done about it. I doubt if the sheriff will be willing to hang all those men. There’s no proof except what they told you. And if we question them, they’ll probably say they were bragging to impress you,” said Jonah.
Now Roz seemed a little upset. Her eyes flashed. She flushed and loosened the top buttons on her dark brown dress, exposing her neck. Jonah tried not to stare at the creamy skin she exposed, but he couldn’t help himself.
“I’m not trying to get them all hanged!” Roz insisted. “Even if they might deserve it.”
She’s so passionate despite her restrained eating habits. Roz is the perfect woman for me! the thought came into his head. I’ve only known her a few days, but I can tell she’s my match. Interested in solving crimes, just like me. And desirable—oh, so desirable!
Now Jonah felt the undeniable physical longing for Roz pound through his veins. His brain felt befuddled again like it had the night before. But he gathered his thoughts and answered her.
“No. Don’t worry. Hanging those men isn’t what I had in mind. And we can’t arrest everyone in the whole town,” he said. “We’ll just keep looking for Gertie’s killer. Right now, I’m only interested in that crime. We’ll find her murderer if he hasn’t left town, or if he’s really one of the saloon customers. I still have my suspicions about Cowboy Bob though.”
“Cowboy Bob is suspicious and strange, but I’m sure it wasn’t him,” said Roz. “I’m positive.”
“Hmm,” said Jonah.
He pushed his empty plate aside.
“Are you sure you’re not going to eat tonight?” he asked.
